Ernest Gellner Quotes

It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round. ~ Ernest Gellner

The displacement of class politics by identity politics has been very confusing to older Marxists, who for many years clung to the old industrial working class as their preferred category of the underprivileged. They tried to explain this shift in terms of what Ernest Gellner labeled the "Wrong Address Theory": "Just as extreme Shi'ite Muslims hold that Archangel Gabriel made a mistake, delivering the Message to Mohamed when it was intended for Ali, so Marxists basically like to think that the spirit of history or human consciousness made a terrible boob. The awakening message was intended for classes, but by some terrible postal error was delivered to nations. ~ Francis Fukuyama

The way forward does not lie in amateur and comically timeless linguistic sociology which takes 'forms of life ' for granted (and this is what philosophy has been recently), but in the systematic study of forms of life which does not take them for granted at all. It hardly matters whether such an inquiry is called philosophy or sociology. ~ Ernest Gellner

Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak. ~ Ernest Gellner

The co-presence of mind and object simply is not sufficient for an apprehension or comprehension of any object. Before one can seize an object, one must be equipped with a whole mass of sensitivities, concepts, expectations, background assumptions. A layman looking at a car engine just sees a jumble of metal objects and wires; a person who knows about car engines can immediately identify the parts and see their interconnection. Countless similar examples can be invoked: the capacity to perceive depends on the possession of the appropriate concepts. ... And here's the rub: the concepts, the anticipatory classifications and interpretations, contain theories which a) had to be discovered and built up by a long process, and b) may yet in the future turn out to be false. So even the purest of hearts, free of inner deception, will not perceive and understand an object unless endowed with proper intellectual equipment. Perception is never, so to speak, the innocent encounter of a pure mind with a naked object, and therefore capable of serving as an untainted foundation for an edifice of knowledge; perception is the encounter with some given element, which cannot be seized or isolated in its purity, but depends on a corpus of knowledge acquired up to that time, but open to revision in the future. ~ Ernest Gellner

People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing. ~ Ernest Gellner

Nowledge which ... transcends the bounds, the prejudices and prejudgements of any one society and culture is not an illusion but, on the contrary, a glorious and luminous reality. Just how it was achieved remains subject to debate. ~ Ernest Gellner

Capital, like capitalism, seems an overrated category. ~ Ernest Gellner

Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist ... ~ Ernest Gellner

Just as every girl should have a husband, preferably her own, so every culture must have its state, preferably its own. ~ Ernest Gellner

Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep ... ~ Ernest Gellner

What people still do not like to admit is that there were two crimes in the form of one. Just as the destruction of Jewry was the necessary condition for the rise and expansion of Nazism, so the ethnic cleansing of Germans was a precondition for the Stalinization of Poland. I first noticed this point when reading an essay by the late Ernest Gellner, who at the end of the war had warned Eastern Europeans that collective punishment of Germans would put them under Stalin's tutelage indefinitely. They would always feel the guilty need for an ally against potential German revenge. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Tribalism never prospers, for when it does, everyone will respect it as a true nationalism, and no-one will dare call it tribalism. ~ Ernest Gellner

Industrial Society is not merely one containing 'industry,' large-scale productive units capable of supplying man's material needs in a way which can eliminate poverty: it is also a society in which knowledge plays a part wholly different from that which it played in earlier social forms, and which indeed possesses a quite different type of knowledge. Modern science is inconceivable outside an industrial society: but modern industrial society is equally inconceivable without modern science. Roughly, science is the mode of cognition of industrial society, and industry is the ecology of science. ~ Ernest Gellner

[I am a humble adherent of] ... Enlightenment Rationalist Fundamentalism. ~ Ernest Gellner

Academic environments are generally characterised by the presence of peole who claim to understand more than in fact they do. Linguistic Philosophy has produced a great revolution, generating people who claim not to understand when in fact they do. Some achieve great virtuosity at it. Any beginner in philosophy can manage not to understand, say, Hegel, but I have heard people who were so advanced that they knew how not to understand writers of such limpid clarity as Bertrand Russell or A.J. Ayer. ~ Ernest Gellner

Ideas, and even the detection of errors, require more than care and caution. ~ Ernest Gellner

Man must always imagine and believe in a "second" reality or a better world than the one that is given him by nature. ~ Ernest Becker

You go along your whole life and they seem as though they mean something and they always end up not meaning anything. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

My father was a deeply sentimental man. And like all sentimental men, he was also very cruel. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing. ~ Ernest Gaines

I met the devil,' Ernest said, finishing his glass of wine, 'and he doesn't give a damn about art. ~ Paula McLain

Faith is a deep and great mystery. To tell her that I have faith in Jesus will not convince her that she too must have faith, that she must believe. ~ James Ernest Shaw

But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Laughter produces in the air
a vibration more closely related
to the vibration of God's voice
when He commanded the
universe to come into being
than any other sound. ~ Chris Ernest Nelson

That in some way he could work the fat off his soul the way a fighter went into the mountains to work and train in order to burn it out of his body ~ Ernest Hemingway,

That's the way our friends the anarchists talk. Whenever things get really bad they want to set fire to something and to die. ~ Ernest Hemingway

The apple had fallen right next to the crazy tree. ~ Ernest Cline

Science produces an incomparably lyrical state in this man. ~ Ernest Solvay

To hell with luck. I'll bring the luck with me. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Until you truly learn how to act well, you shall always act only for your actions to teach you how to act well ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Thar is two things that every national crisis is bound to show up: first, a lot o' dum fools in command; second, lot o great commanders in the ranks. An' fortunately before the crisis is over the hull thing is sure set right, and the men is where they oughter be. ~ Ernest Thompson Seton

But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), ... ~ Ernest Hemingway,

It is the professional pilot's bounden duty to know the idiosyncrasies of each type (of airplane), for he must spend a large proportion of his active career exploiting its qualities and compensating for its faults. These secrets cannot be discovered in a ground school. ~ Ernest K. Gann

I do not want you ever to initiate any action for any refunds of taxes without first consulting me and presenting the matter fully to me so that I may judge whether it is an honorable and ethical action to take, not simply legally, but according to my own personal standards. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

There exist words of mediocrity, songs of mediocrity, and life lessons of mediocrity. Advice of mediocrity, books of mediocrity and companions of mediocrity are also available.
One may also meet songs of purpose that can make us ponder to wonder and advice filled with authority to dare in life. We may also hear life lessons that can challenge and change us.
What do you listen to? If what you listen to will not make you, it will mar you. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

A speech from Ernest Bevin on a major occasion had all the horrific fascination of a public execution. If the mind was left immune, eyes and ears and emotions were riveted. ~ Michael Foot

He was my date. I got a massage, and I must have taken five aspirins to calm myself down. In the restaurant, I saw him from across the room, and I got such butterflies in my stomach and such a thing that went from head to toe. He had like a halo around his head of stars to me. He projected something I have never seen in my life ... . when I'm with him I'm in awe, and I don't know why I can't snap out of it ... . I can't think. He's so fascinating ... . ~ Ernest Becker

Ernest Hemingway once said, The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them. ~ Anonymous

Today is Sunday
It will be Sunday forever
Black birds fly over
In this one instance
May we never recover
From this one new something
We are just starting to discover ~ Lourd Ernest H. De Veyra

You cannot make a socialist revolution without really trying. ~ Ernest Mandel

Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame. ~ William Ernest Henley

The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

In your walk with Christ, you shall meet crises, but, when crises arise, remember Christ! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgement. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

The true meaning of success is not in how many times you failed because of your hindrances, but how you became a success regardless of your hindrances and failures ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The quest to sin always knocks at the door of the heart, but behold! You have the right and will to open your door or never to mind the knocks, no matter how intense it is! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Civilisation cannot survive if it rests on a propertyless proletariat. ~ Ernest Bevin

There is an intrinsic connection between discipline and freedom that affects us in many aspects of our lives. ~ Ernest Cadorin

On clear nights, the moon casts a glow on everything uniformly. It doesn't discriminate by shining on one pond and not on another. ~ Ernest Cadorin

There isn't any me. I'm you. Don't make up a separate me. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

I saw the sunlight in a leafy place, Bathing itself in liquid green and amber
Where every flower had tears hid in its petals, And every leaf was lovely with the rain. ~ Ernest Rhys

To grow up at all is to conceal the mass of internal scar tissue that throbs in our dreams. ~ Ernest Becker

But then we did not think of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. we thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

To the man who can perfectly practice inaction, all things are possible. ~ Ernest Holmes